Ren'Py - Abandoned - The God of Desire [v0.2] [Grindelwald]

The following review is based off my personal experience with playing this Game/Visual Novel... I try to be as brutally honest and detailed as I can, and these are my own opinions and thoughts, from one or more play throughs... The version this review is based on is v0.1.1...

Originally Reviewed on 12/21/2017

This game is yet another in a long line of stat/skill grinding games, with a Mind Control motif... And like most of them, it seems to have the over used Family sex stuff in it, as well...

The visuals are alright, with the characters being average in quality... The backdrops are very befitting of the fantasy era that the story takes place, and for the most part look fairly unique and creative... The training animations are alright, but you do have to wait till their done before being able to move on... The UI is not bad either, and very easy to figure out... There is a Map, and it looks like sometime in the developments future, there might be other locations beyond the town to go to at some point... It is a bit creepy when mind controlling characters, as they take on an almost mannequin type look, completely emotionless and unmoving (beyond what ever pose the protagonist places them into), and their eyes change as well...

The script is very short, mostly consisting of the introduction dialogue and some brief conversations with other characters... There are a few grammar errors, but not many... There isn't much in the way of story since this game is primarily focused on a relationship/mind control game play concept... There is also another skill that can be trained, but it does not appear to do anything yet... The over all plot revolves around the male protagonist making a deal with a god of desire, and is given abilities to use, in order to work up to becoming a god himself, or perhaps something else... It's not clear what would happen if you decided the protagonist should go down a more good guy road... After the introduction, the game becomes another grind fest working on raising skills, relationship stats with other characters, begging for money, etc... Because the game is super early in it's production cycle, there isn't much content... There is some erotic content, but not much...

I get the feeling this game is less focused on story telling, and more focused on grinding out stats to reveal more erotic scenes... But as I said before, it is early in development, so who knows what road it will actually go down, but all signs currently point to grindy porn game...

Overall the concept of the plot is alright, but having yet another grind game with little in the way of meaningful and deep story, it's kind of boring... Only time will really tell if the author/s plan to add far more story elements then what this early introduction currently shows... I may, at some distant time, come back and see how much progress has been made, perhaps just to see if my predictions were completely off or spot on... If it is indeed just another mind control stat grind porn game, at least the method of grinding seems somewhat different then some others I've seen, not much different but enough to feel the difference...

This isn't a terrible game. It isn't a great game, either.

I'm not sure exactly how much content this game has because I got bored of slowly and repetitively grinding stats without knowing if I was ever going to get new options for them or not.

Each day you can improve your relationship with one of three women, and increase one of Weaponship / Mind Control / Conjuration. In the 80 game days I played relationship increases did nothing, Conjuration did nothing, Weaponship let me break into three houses - but I couldn't do anything in any of them.

I did get to some content, through Mind Control only. Four women got groped, two of them got naked, and one of them got boinked (blow job also possible).

The biggest problems I have is a) No feedback. Lockpicking either works or it doesn't, I have no idea when (if) I will ever be able to break into the Earl's place. I have no idea when (if) I will ever be able to molest any of the sleeping women b) Slow boring grinding. For example, 18 game days spent to increase weaponship with exactly the same action each day and no difference in effect after the first 6 or so.

How to quickly improve this:
* Less timewasting. You could double or triple the training increases.
* Better feedback. After training give an idea of how good you feel you are in that stat. If it is pointless to train further, let the player know!
* Still more better feedback. (More / any) Dialogue changes with women as your relationship with them improves.
* Yes, really, better feedback. A scene playback gallery which show how much content you have yet to unlock would be cool.

The God of Desire [v0.1.1] [Grindelwald]
Here is what I found.

- Intro starts strong, but quickly makes some logic defying moves. Example, the Earl lies about your mission making you look like a failure, which is reasonable, but then says that the "people now think you are a looser and a creep". This reads as false, If a hero comes back and survives alone people might think he is a coward and ran away from battle. That is cowardice, not being a looser. Creep also has NOOO logical connection to the story why that might be.
-Writing just shows issues. "You will die as a virgin", this coming from a war hero and total stud? This reads as written from a juvenile.
-Errors in writing syntax, and spelling.
-A woman gets mad at the MC for what he did to her boyfriend? Shouldn't it be husband if this is more historical?
- Point being, writing needs major improvement, and that will be that last I harp on the subject.

-So the game plays like a dating simulator. Not what I was expecting. Personally I like story driven games, but this doesn't make it bad.
-No labels for the of what the icons mean in town? Which house is my house? Under the icons show the names of the locations.
-Game makes the mistake of telling the player how to feel about actions. Like you walk in on your nude sister. It then assumes you get all hard looking at your sister??? Let the player decide that as an option. Once again this reads as juvenile.
-Mind Control... Some will like this but I think it's boring.
-LOL the time icon means you beg for money???? /sigh
-Sex scenes feel lifeless. LOL funny thing is that this is rape, but boring rape. As it is mind controlled they look like empty dolls, lifeless of all emotions. While that is logical, it is boring.
-Sex scene was also only a few stills and no commentary. Feels lazy.
-Different characters have different sized bodies, while most are on the petite side (which is historically more accurate), you might want to add some women with realistic big breasts.

The problem with this game is that it is hollow. The characters have NO personality. When you talk to someone, we need to have options to respond so we feel engaged. We also need to have different conversations and them not to be repeated a thousand times, but this is a major problem since you have a sandbox style... Personally I don't like the mind control but I probably am a minority on that.

I think this could be fun trying to get revenge on the Earl, and plan to take his daughter as a sex slave. Thing is maybe you create a romance where you can enslave her or marry her if you like her. That is an interesting story for me that includes includes sex.

This could be fixed... but it needs some major reconstruction in the writing department. My opinion is that this is a 2/5 and that is only because I like the looks of the characters and that it looks enough like a viking fantasy.

Looks promising so far. It definetly has potential. The Setting is fresh, the characters look good and its not running on RPGM. The developer must now keep adding content, otherwise it might get boring very fast. On his patreon page he states that he wants to add alot more characters to meet and alot more places to visit. I can only hope he keeps this promise.